Friday Free-For-All: Gun Defense Stories From Just the Past Week

There is no shortage of crime stories that have happy, feel-good endings because the victims had access to guns. But the national media chooses to pass them over in favor of sensational gun crimes that better fit their anti-gun narrative. Most of these stories happened in the past week. Videos are at the links.

The Leon County Sheriff’s Office says 26-year-old Lance Tomberlin went into a store just outside Tallahassee on January 2, produced the cattle prod and demanded money from the clerk. Officials say he shocked the clerk several times before the clerk pulled a handgun.

Authorities say Tomberlin fled and another employee tried to restrain him, but he eventually escaped in his truck. Deputies stopped Tomberlin’s truck but he fled on foot.

Just after midnight, the unidentified 48 year old man began waving a gun and yelling at the group of people and fired a shot. One of the men in the group being harassed, produced his own gun and fired at the man, striking him once in the upper portion of the arm.

The man who was shot ran a block to the 4700 block of Newcomb Place where he called police for help. Police arrived and transported the man, only to later arrest him for the incident on Dr. King Drive.

Authorities say the man in the group who opened fire on his tormenter, had a valid Conceal and Carry permit and was not detained by police.

People who know the owner of an Independence coin shop owner injured during an attempted robbery that also left the suspect severely injured say he is a very well-liked man in the southeast Kansas community.

A cousin of Ken Preble, owner of Uncle Ken’s Coin and Jewelry Shop, never expected him to have to deal with anything like Wednesday’s incident.

“He’s just a real good, mild guy,” said Jim Richardson. “Never been in any trouble. Just a super guy.”

That’s why Richardson was shocked to learn his cousin had ben shot during an attempted robbery.

“We didn’t know what to do and then we heard a lot of different stories, you know,” Richardson said.

Independence Police Chief Harry Smith said the suspect entered the shop about 10:30 a.m. and pulled a gun. Preble was also able to grab a gun, Smith said, and both men were shot during a struggle.

Smith said the suspect ran from the business and made it about a block before police caught up with him. Both the suspect and Preble were taken to an Independence hospital. The suspect was later flown to a Wichita hospital.

Richardson and his wife were on their way to visit Preble in the Independence hospital, where the coin shop owner was undergoing surgery. He was shot once in the left arm during the struggle with the suspect, Smith said.

Kelby Smith, 34, had just gotten out of his car in his brother’s driveway on Crescent Drive about 8:45 p.m. when a man with a pistol approached him and demanded money, police said. Smith was carrying his 2-month-old son in a car seat at the time. He knelt down in front of his son to shield him as the robber held the gun to Smith’s head, police said. While Smith was handing over a small amount of cash, he pulled his gun out of a holster, said detective Brian Boesch of the Columbus police robbery squad. Smith is a concealed-carry permit holder, Boesch said. The robber fled, police said, but then pointed his gun back at Smith as he ran. “When I pulled my pistol he took off running and I shot and it hit him,” Smith later told a 911 dispatcher. The dispatcher asked Smith how he knew the man had been shot. “Cause when I shot he started crying and he fell to the ground,” Smith told the dispatcher.

The 15-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister had been home alone in the Mount Royal Village subdivision when around 2:30 p.m. a pair of burglars tried the front and back doors, then broke a back window.

The teenager grabbed his father’s assault rifle and knew what to do with it.

“We don’t try to hide things from our children in law enforcement,” Lt. Jeffrey Stauber said. “That young boy was protecting his sister. He was in fear for his life and her life.”

Police said three male suspects broke into the home just before 10:00 p.m. on the 2400 block of E. St. Vrain St.

Al Michaud was home during the break-in. A struggle took place between Michaud and the suspects. Michaud got his gun and shot two of the suspects, police said.

“There was one by the door. I put a bullet in his chest. I was going to shoot the other one in the chest but the one who was closest to me hit my arm and the gun went off and hit him in his leg,” said Michaud.

The two suspects who were shot ran from the home, police said. They stopped about one block away because of their injuries.

She told ABC11 that she learned from other neighbors that a woman inside the home was also attacked by intruders, but managed to escape to a nearby home.

Her husband reportedly did not suffer life-threatening injuries, but was taken to a local hospital by EMS.

Shortly after the shooting, officers tried to stop a Cadillac on S. Wilmington Street near Ileagnes Road and Rush Street. The car was reportedly seen on East Lane Street by neighbors during the invasion. The Cadillac ended up crashing, and two people inside the car were taken into custody.

Monday afternoon, police charged 26-year-old Jahaad Tariem Allah Marshall with one count of first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, one count of attempted murder, one count of attempted first-degree rape, and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Court records show he was sent to a South Carolina prison for burglary seven years ago.

Shabar Master Marshall, age 16, is charged with one count of first-degree burglary, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, one count of attempted murder, and one count of first-degree forcible sex offense.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – A citizen with a gun stopped a knife wielding man as he began stabbing people Thursday evening at the downtown Salt Lake City Smith’s store.

Police say the suspect purchased a knife inside the store and then turned it into a weapon. Smith’s employee Dorothy Espinoza says, “He pulled it out and stood outside the Smiths in the foyer. And just started stabbing people and yelling you killed my people. You killed my people.”

Espinoza says, the knife wielding man seriously injured two people. “There is blood all over. One got stabbed in the stomach and got stabbed in the head and held his hands and got stabbed all over the arms.”

Then, before the suspect could find another victim – a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. “A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith’s grabbed him.”

He held the woman at gunpoint until police arrived.

“All I wanted to do was stop the lady,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the judge, jury, and executioner so to speak right here.”

As a state senator in Illinois, President Obama opposed legislation providing an exception to handgun restrictions if the weapon was used in the defense of one’s home.

Obama’s vote would have maintained the status quo, which made it a violation of municipal gun ban law to use a firearm to save your own life in your own home. But the bill was passed anyway without his support.

The vote is a sign of how committed Obama may be to strict gun control measures.

The Illinois vote is hardly ancient history, having occurred in 2004 as Obama was running for election to the U.S. Senate. In opposing the measure, Obama lined up well to the left of the mainstream, as the Illinois Senate included 32 Democrats to 26 Republicans but approved the bill by an overwhelming margin and subsequently overrode a veto by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

After reading the gun control proposals issued forth from Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC, I’ve taken it upon myself to scour the internet for dangerous terrorists that are using the sort of assault rifles that should be banned according to “common sense” gun control proposals.

If you see these dangerous individuals, or people like them, you are encouraged to call Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Air Force with targeting information.

Former Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell on MSNBC friday morning ” The good thing about Newtown is it was so horrific it galvanized Americans to a point where i think the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side.”

Good Gad. Talk about standing on the graves of dead children. These people are so craven they don’t even know how sick they sound to decent people.

When it comes to Piers Morgan and his gun control mania, we’ve seen more than a few Sununu moments created by our side that might have made the choir cheer but did little to change many minds. In the end, it’s all noise; it’s all flash; it’s all a meaningless game of checkers.

Ben Shapiro came to play chess.

Shapiro had obviously studied Morgan’s rhetorical tactics and arguments, and prepared himself for them — not with insults or ad hominem, but with direct rebuttals based on facts, history, and logic.

First off, Shapiro opened by calmly stating a very simple fact: that the lazy premise Morgan has used for weeks now to bully those who dare disagree with him is unconscionable:

What you tend to do is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don’t seem to care enough about the dead kids. If they cared more about the dead kids they would agree with you on policy.

Faced with this fact, all Morgan could do was symbolically grasp his pearls and literally squeak, “How dare you.”

And this was the moment that changed everything.

Libs need to be called out every time they claim “absolute moral authority” by standing on the graves of the dead.

Ah, geeez! It must’ve been on my Tuesdays with Morrie day, when the oatmeal was running down my chin. Somehow I knew there was some kind of brilliance connected with it, as soon as I saw it. Now I know!